Two officials from Guinea’s
electoral commission were jailed for a year over irregularities
in the first round of the West African country’s presidential
election in June, officials said.

Ben Souka Sylla, president of the National Independent
Electoral Commission, and Boubacar Diallo, the body’s planning
chief, were imprisoned by a court yesterday in Conakry, the
capital, said Mohamed Lamine Doubmia, a lawyer for the
opposition Rally of the Guinean People. They were also ordered
to pay fines of 2 million Guinean francs ($347), he said.

The two were accused by opposition parties of not
submitting results from five constituencies in the June 27 vote
to the Supreme Court, which had to validate them.

The commission regrets the “grave verdict” and will hold a
meeting this weekend to discuss it, Thierno Saidou Bayo, a
spokesman for the body, said in an interview.

Twenty-four candidates competed in the June 27 vote, a year
and a half after army Captain Moussa Dadis Camara seized power
following the death of former President Lansana Conte, who ruled
for two decades. Guinea hasn’t had a democratic transfer of
power since it gained independence from France in 1958.

Cellou Dalien Diallo, leader of the Union of Democratic
Forces of Guinea, garnered 43.7 percent of the vote in June,
while Alpha Condé, head of the Rally of the Guinean People
obtained 18.2 percent.

Condé’s party said the irregularities reduced the number of
votes he received. The verdict proves there was fraud in the
first ballot, Martin Conde, a spokeswoman for the party, said in
an interview yesterday.

Guinea holds as much as half of the world’s reserves of
bauxite, used to make aluminum, more than 4 billion metric tons
of “high-grade” iron ore, “significant” diamond and gold
deposits, and uranium, according to the U.S. State Department’s
website.